Alright guys, one of the many weird noises my car makes is a chatter from the A/C compressor when it is turned off. Yes, it's noisy when it's OFF.

When I turn the A/C on the noise immediately goes away and it blows nice and cold.

I'm thinking it might be a clutch or bearing in the compressor? Anyone else have this problem?

Car has 53k miles and I have not fiddled around with the A/C at all.

 

Upon further searching I've found some old threads discussing this very topic, and it sounds like an issue with the compressor clutch. I guess I'll have to take it apart and figure out what's wrong and if it needs to be replaced...

 

+1 for a/c compressor clutch. the same thing happened to mine, replaced with new clutch,coil and pulley.

 

Yup, bad clutch bearing. You'll need a special puller to get the clutch off the compressor.

 

I had a scraping noise with it off. The plate was scraping on the pulley. I used a puller to pull the clutch plate off. It wasn't worn so I sanded the plate and face of the pulley to get off any rust, sprayed it off with brake cleaner, and pressed it on with a wider air gap. I think spec is .020 to .030. I set it at .030 or maybe a touch over. Clutch still engages and scraping is gone, so all is good for now. My car has really low miles and I think rust builds up when they sit. Just something to look into.
https://ls1tech.com/forums/general-m...-c-clutch.html

 

^ Yup, that about covers it. It either has a rough/uneven surface or the clearance is a bit too tight.